The present invention relates to the field of business solutions development, and in particular to the provision of an automated method, system and program product for evaluating particular aspects of a business enterprise and business-related requirements of the enterprise which may, for example, include information technology (IT) requirements, and efficiently developing a business solution deliverables such as an IT system proposal based upon an articulated set of those requirements. Advantageously, the present invention may be utilized to modify an existing business environment (such as an existing IT infrastructure) to more closely coincide with articulated business requirements or to develop a new business system (such as a new IT infrastructure) coincident with those requirements.
The proliferation of information processing solutions available to a business enterprise has proven advantageous to most modern enterprises, providing an opportunity to apply the benefits of computer processing technology to most every area of the enterprise and accordingly to better service customers in a more efficient manner. However, the value provided by these myriad advances in information technology has come at a cost, specifically the burden of managing the many disparate IT solutions that have been integrated into different areas of the typical business enterprise.
As IT expands throughout the enterprise, demand for IT consultant services has concomitantly surged to address the burgeoning complexities of managing the corporate IT infrastructure. Within this growing market the complexities inherent in effectively identifying pertinent IT solutions required by a business customer and mapping those IT needs to the skills and solutions offered by a particular solution provider, the so-called Business Solutions Assessment (BSA) process, has proven to be an equally complicated endeavor, mismanagement of which may translate directly into lost business opportunities for a solution provider. As the types of IT solutions available to the business customer continually expand, IT solution providers are increasingly challenged by encounters with potential customers utilizing technologies which are outside the traditional areas supported by the provider. Alternatively, the success of a multi-faceted solutions provider may be impeded by limitations in the solutions experience of a particular marketing representative in contact with a potential customer. For example, a customer who has clearly defined needs in the area of business intelligence (BI) may not be well-served by a marketing professional with experience in the area of server consolidation solutions notwithstanding the fact that his company does in fact provide BI solutions. Consequently, a successful BSA implementation would provide readily accessible support to enable a marketing professional to draw upon the entire breadth of the solution set offered by his company.
In the typical BSA scenario, the potential customer faces a number of IT challenges, some more pressing than others, in various areas of IT. It would be advantageous to enable a solutions provider representative to prioritize these needs by assessing their impact on the customer""s business and to map these prioritized needs against the solutions provided by his/her company to determine which needs best matched the solutions provided thereby. At the onset of the BSA undertaking is an initial customer engagement process. During this critical period, the ability to establish credibility with the customer, and to ensure that all parties involved have a clear understanding of the business benefits which will result from the engagement and their relevance to the needs of the customer is of paramount importance. Ultimately, it is in both the customer""s and provider""s best business interest to qualify the project prior to investing too much resource in an endeavor. Accordingly, the ideal solution assessment process will enable the customer to make informed decision about the proffered solutions early in a project, while establishing the proper expectations, roles and responsibilities for all parties involved. Often this will entail a proof of concept undertaking to demonstrate the feasibility of the project and the creation of a high-level workplan for the project.
The ideal BSA process addresses questions regarding the risk to be shared between the customer and the solution provider, the resources required, the approximate cost in money and time and the reasonably expected benefits of the endeavor. Currently, these issues are addressed in an ad-hoc fashion based upon the skills of the particular marketing team and the business knowledge and experience of the customer involved in the undertaking. It is clear that a well-articulated approach to this process would better serve all parties involved.
Other solutions have proposed the use of computer-based expert system to provide a ready interface for a consultation client. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,006,998 entitled Computer System With Easy Input Means For Consultation, teaches a computer system suitable for consultation in such a case where plans are to be created while a concurrent dialogue is undertaken with a client asking for advice. It distinguishes over prior art system which required that a full set of customer inputs were initially secured prior to providing a response to the customer, which suffer the disadvantage of not having facilities for addressing the customers questions which may arise in providing input to the system. The patent further teaches the inclusion of advertisements within the series of interactive inquiries addressed to the client which may additionally be responded to by the client. Accordingly, the patent is focused on the facilitation of the interaction between a computer and a client, but fails to teach the implementation of a system or method for engagement with a client wherein increasingly detailed client data regarding a potential IT solution is iteratively applied against a knowledge base to enable generation an IT business solution proposal. In other areas, U.S. Pat. No. 5,680,305 covering a System And Method For Evaluating Real Estate, teaches providing a quantitative evaluation of a real estate interest owned by a business entity via the processing of numerical data assigned to various real estate valuations such as utilization indices, and revenues of the entity owning the property to calculate a score attributable to the property, which reflects a quantitative evaluation of the real estate. This patent is a specific expert system tailored to address the intricacies of the real estate industry to place a numerical valuation on the on a given property, it does not address the complex issues involved in exploring the various facets of a customer""s IT infrastructure as well as the business environment and needs goals of that customer to devise IT solutions which best meet the determined needs.
From the foregoing it can be seen that a need exists for an IT-based solution which addresses these and other related issues concerning the BSA. Such a solution would use IT in the form of an automate set of electronic questionnaires tied to modelling tools and a knowledge base to assist in addressing these issues, and provide a manageable framework to a systematic BSA process. More specifically, the ideal automated solution should enable the implementation of a series of assessment processes designed to ensure that the proper analysis is conducted in the course of undertaking a Business Solution Assessment.
While the present invention deals specifically with an automated method, system and product for providing IT solution proposals via the provision of an inventive BSA process flow, it is contemplated herein that such inventive techniques can be and are readily applied to the determination of any type of business solution offered by a solutions provider, be it in the area IT, plant security, personnel administration, financial services, or site maintenance services, etc. The sole limitation of the present inventive process is the ability of the solution provider to glean the appropriate information from a potential customer at the appropriate point in the customer engagement, and to apply the obtained information in a meaningful manner to its set of available solutions and the data derived from previous customer engagements which is stored in its knowledge-base.
The foregoing problems and shortcomings of the prior art are addressed and further advantageous solutions are provided by the present invention wherein is provided a method, system and program product for generating business solution deliverables including a business solution proposal for a business entity based upon a set of business related requirements which is collected from a business entity via an interactive process and is sequentially analyzed to determine the appropriate business solutions therefor. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention entails the successive logical generation of a set of information processing requirements as well as the determination, based upon the generated set of processing requirements of IT solutions optimized to best match the generated set of requirements.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention facilities are provided for qualifying a prospective customer for whom business solution services may be performed. An automated checklist tool is used to ensure that the prospective customer is briefed on relevant available solution services. The tool comprises a database including sets of solution services and products associated with different types of business service or solution scenarios. In a preferred embodiment the tool further comprises services for providing a sampling of the beneficial results which the customer may expect from the proffered solution. This feature assists in securing participation from potential customers.
Once a prospective customer has been properly qualified, a further aspect of the present invention provides data gathering facilities for gathering (for example) information processing requirements coincident with the IT system objectives of an enterprise. These data gathering facilities may be coupled to the aforementioned sampling services which require that a certain sub-set of overlapping data is secured from the customer. In an embodiment of the invention, the data gathering facilities are used to identify xe2x80x9cislandsxe2x80x9d or partitions, comprising a plurality of elements of an existing IT environment which are grouped together by virtue of one or more common features among these elements. For example, such common features may include physical proximity, budget, applications or data utilized by these elements, or groups of users accessing these elements.
Input is solicited from the qualified customer via a profile template to identify, for each partition, information regarding the current state of each partition and any problems that have been identified for the partition, as well as the future information processing objectives for each partition.
A profile assessment logic tool provides a logical score assigned to each partition based upon the profile-based input. The logical score is an approximation of value that the system owner may derive from enhancements made to each partition. The profile assessment logic further provides an indication relating to the facility with which already available business solutions may be utilized in accordance with problems and objectives articulated by the owner via the profile input. Partitions are then ranked in accordance these logical scores and indications.
For each ranked partition a correction logic device provides an assessment of whether the partitions have been properly identified. For example, the correction logic will determine whether the amount of work to be done to address the objectives and problems in an identified partition is too great in scope, such that the partition should be further divided into smaller or different partitions. In this iterative manner the partitioning process is continually refined.
In an embodiment, the correction logic further determines whether the results of the profile assessment logic produces a clearly ranked set of partitions. If the results of the profile assessment logic is not a clearly ranked set of partitions, the profile template may need further refinement to generate a more clearly articulated ranked set of partitions.
In a further embodiment, all of the data captured from the system owner via the profile template is added to a database comprising data from a set of such customers. Logic means may be further provided for analyzing the accumulated data to align the business requirements of a present customer with one or more existing customers from the database. Aligning may be accomplished in accordance with various articulated parameters.
The customer is prompted to address questions on a detailed input template for each of the ranked partitions. The answers and the opportunity identified within each of the ranked partitions are each provided to an opportunity tool set comprising logic tools such as sizers, proposal generators, financial tools, work assessment tools, planning tools and architectural templates, each of which may be custom tools or standardized software packages, for determining factors such as architecture, the work plan and the financial business case associated with enhancements recommended for a particular partition. The detailed questionnaire is implemented such that the answers thereto provide the input to the entire set of tools comprising the opportunity tool set.
The opportunity tool set generates business solution deliverables including a proposal for the enhancement of the partition in accordance with the requirements articulated by the customer in an efficient manner so as to elicit the customer""s objectives and address them in as few steps as possible.
In a further embodiment, each deliverable and all data by the opportunity tool set and during the entire BSA process is added to a database which may be used as a repository for model solutions which may be used by the opportunity tool set in generating future deliverables.